Eps 642: Skip the Punishment, Focus on Solutions

Joyful Courage is choosing to walk the talk and stay in my own lane… Leaning into the light and encouragement towards myself and spreading that light and encouragement to those around me. Joyful Courage is about showing up with authenticity, confidence and self worth.

Resources Mentioned

• Positive Discipline for Teens class (6-week series inside the Living Joyful Courage Membership)
• The Iceberg Metaphor (belief behind behavior / mistaken goals)
• Boxes of Burdens activity
• Dan Siegel’s work on adolescent brain development and synaptic pruning
• The 4 Rs of Punishment: Resentment, Rebellion, Retreat (+ a fourth Casey couldn’t recall in the moment — it’s Revenge)
• Living Joyful Courage Membership Program
• 15-Minute Explore Call: besproutable.com/explore

Transcription

[00:00:00] Casey O'Roarty: Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Joyful Courage Podcast. This is a place where parents of tweens and teens come to find inspiration, information, and encouragement in the messy terrain of adolescents this season of parenting. Is no joke. And while the details of what we're all moving through might be slightly different, we are indeed having a very collective experience.
[00:00:30] This is a space where we center building, relationship, nurturing life skills, and leaning into our own personal growth and man. The opportunities abound, right. My name is Casey Ody. I am a parent coach, positive discipline lead trainer, and captain of the adolescent ship over at Sprout Bowl. I'm also a speaker and a published author.
[00:00:53] I've been working with parents and families for over 20 years. And continue to navigate my own experience of being a mom with my two young adult kids. I'm so honored that you're here and listening. Please give back to the podcast by sharing it with friends or on social media rate and review us on Apple or Spotify.
[00:01:13] Word of mouth is how we grow. Thank you so, so much. Enjoy the show.
[00:01:22] Hey. Hi. Hi friends. Welcome back to the Joyful Courage Podcast. I am excited for this week's show. It is yet another solo show. We're gonna get into some interviews in the upcoming weeks, but yeah. It's you and me. It's you and me today. So I have had the privilege over, and maybe I've mentioned this over the last few weeks, to be leading the six week positive Discipline for Teens class in the Living Joyful Courage Membership Program.
[00:02:00] And it has been so fun. It's been a few years since I led the full six week class, and every time I do it, I feel like. It gets more fine tuned. I get better at delivering the content and facilitating the experiences and just kind of being with the participants and their experiences of the class. And this round is no different.
[00:02:31] What is different about this round? This is the first time I've done it inside of my membership program. And what's really cool is sometimes. It can feel like there's so much to think about and consider, especially on the nights where we dive into teen brain development and like last week we dove into the belief behind behavior mistaken goals, the whole iceberg thing.
[00:02:59] It's a lot. It's a lot to hold. It's a lot to consider. And it can feel really overwhelming. What's different and so fun is that all these people that are going through the class with me are with me for the next year. So integrating this content and transforming it into how it looks in our practice.
[00:03:27] We've got this huge amount of time to really roll around and play with it. And it's so awesome to say, I know this is a lot and we've got all year, six weeks is not very much time. And you know, so many people have gone through the program and then I am in communication with them and they're like, oh yeah, I forgot about that.
[00:03:50] Or, oh man, you know, everything that I was practicing during the class. You know, life's taken over, blah, blah, blah. That's the beauty of the membership program and it's pretty rad. So what we are leaning into this week in the positive discipline class is something that I wanna bring back to the podcast because I've spent time talking about this before.
[00:04:16] In fact, I have a whole series called. Alternatives to punishment. That really leans into all the other things that we can do in our relationships with our teenagers. That are supportive and helpful, even more so than this idea that the right consequence or the right punishment is what's gonna get our kids on the straight and narrow.
[00:04:43] Right? And it's always very, what's the word? Like I can feel it. It's potent in the room, even in a Zoom room. You know, parents really love the question of, yeah, but what if that doesn't work? Or, yeah, but. What if, you know, what's the consequence? What are we gonna do when they do make a mistake, when they do do the wrong thing, when they are breaking rules, like there's no consequences.
[00:05:10] Parents get really worked up about that. There's no consequences. And I'm here to say consequences are neutral and consequences always exist. There's always consequences to our choices. And today on the pod, what I'm gonna unpack with you. Are these concepts of punishment and consequences and the power of solutions.
[00:05:34] This is where actual growth and magic happens. This is where the real skill building becomes available, where there's space to practice and yeah, it's a mindset shift. So that is what I'm inviting you into today as we move through. The podcast content is being open to a mindset shift. All right, let's go.
[00:06:02] Let's dig in. So I have had many podcasts where I talk about the iceberg metaphor, right? And the iceberg really being what we see is the tip of the iceberg, right? What we see, what we have to deal with, what we get phone calls about, what we find out. The behavior that we're not excited about, maybe even worried or fearful about, right?
[00:06:31] That is at the tip of the iceberg. That is what we see. The behavior, the attitude, the eye rolling, the broken curfews, the poor grades, right? That is what we see. That's the tip of the iceberg. That's what's happening above the surface, and it's often what parents. Myself included are in reaction to, right?
[00:06:56] It's what makes us emotional and then we react from that emotion. And it's understandable because we look at some of the things that our kiddos are doing and we slide into this thought process that it's our responsibility to make it stop. It's our responsibility to fix the problem. It's our responsibility to make sure our kids.
[00:07:20] Get on the straight and narrow, right, and it's short sided to simply look at behavior because behavior is purposeful. Behavior is a solution to a problem or a discouragement or a situation that we might not know about, and that's how we get under the surface. That's where the true information that we need.
[00:07:49] Exists. That's where change can happen, is what's happening under the surface. What's happening under the surface, what is driving the behavior? And you know, we also talk a lot on the podcast about brain development and brain science. And this really matters, right? Are teenagers, prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for reasoning.
[00:08:14] Planning impulse control, thinking through long-term consequences. It is under construction during adolescence. It's under construction. It is not working to its fullest potential, not because you have a kiddo who is delayed or a bad kid. Because they have an adolescent brain, it's still under construction and it won't be developed until their mid to late twenties.
[00:08:46] This is biology and it's information that can support us in calming down and shifting how we respond. The behavior we see is a solution to a problem we don't know about. So when we look at the iceberg and we ask what's going on under the surface. We're not just being generous, we're being accurate.
[00:09:06] We're recognizing that our teens may not yet have the neural wiring to consistently make the choices. We would hope that they would make. Especially when emotions are high and stakes feel big. So there's this teen brain development that's happening under the surface. There's the meaning that they're making about the world that they're experiencing, which also really matters.
[00:09:34] We do this activity that is so awesome. Called boxes of burdens, even on Zoom. It's phenomenal, and I won't give you all the details, but basically it gives parents the opportunity to step into their teen's shoes and to hold, to physically hold all of the things that they might be navigating, things that include.
[00:09:59] My mom or my dad is really on my case. They don't seem to care what I'm going through and that's, that sucks. That's something that I'm holding. My friends are acting weird, right? I don't know what's going on there, but that's stressful, right? Everybody's, you know, that I know is starting to get into vaping or smoking weed or drinking at parties, and I don't think I wanna do that, but it looks fun and.
[00:10:29] Maybe I should. Everybody else is doing it. I don't know. I'm in this tension, right? And the list goes on and on. All of these things are happening for our teens and they are significant. They matter, and I think that's really important. I think we hold a lot of. Our teenagers and the choices that they're making and what they're going through, kind of with this like flippant attitude of like, it's not that big of a deal, or just do the right thing.
[00:11:00] Walk away, right, without remembering how strongly they're wired for belonging. Right? How strongly they are wired for autonomy, so it's important. To remember that they're carrying a lot and how we respond to what they're carrying matters.
[00:11:32] So that's a powerful piece of it too. I think the first and foremost, what's super useful for all of us. In every relationship we have is to remember that the behavior that we see is being influenced by, could be a response to, is a solution for issues, challenges, conditioning, beliefs that live under the surface.
[00:11:58] So if we wanna have an impact on what's happening at the tip of the iceberg, we have got to. Be willing to consider what's underneath, to get curious, to validate, to encourage, to use those tools that we talk so much about here, what we tend to do is get scared and look for a punishment, right? I mean, you can call it a consequence if you want, but really many of us, when we're like, well, what should happen?
[00:12:28] How will they know? Gotta teach them a lesson. What we lean towards is punishment, and let's be honest. Punishment is a go-to response. 'cause we're scared. We're scared. Something has happened. Our kid did something that activated our alarm system and our amygdala is on fire, right? Remember that amygdala is that safety desire for safety and security.
[00:12:52] It's going off. We find out our kids have lied or snuck out, or got caught with something they shouldn't have. Our brain goes into survival mode. There is a threat. To our feeling of safety and security, and we wanna jar our kids into understanding this is not okay, right? We want them to feel the weight of their choices and possible terrible outcomes.
[00:13:21] We wanna scare them just enough that they think, well, I better not do that again, or make them uncomfortable enough. For me, I know I've said this on the podcast, I was grounded a lot my junior and senior year of high school. 'cause I snuck out a lot, got into mischief and would be grounded for like three months at a time.
[00:13:43] And I. That did not slow me down. In fact, when I got to college, I really went off the rails because punishment like this is shortsighted. Punishment doesn't account for skills. Punishment doesn't account for brain development. It doesn't take into consideration what's actually happening under the surface for our teens.
[00:14:04] It doesn't take into account where they are lagging in their skills. To maneuver the situations they're finding themselves in, in different ways that are more, you know, cooperative or healthy for them. Again, here's what the research tells us about the adolescent brain, the limbic system, that emotional center, that's where the amygdala lives.
[00:14:31] It's fully online during the teen years. Right. The amygdala, the emotional center. The limbic system, that's what's driving the bus. Meanwhile, the prefrontal cortex, right, like I already mentioned, is still. Working on connecting that wiring. So in real life, what this means is your teenager is navigating a world right with intense emotional responses, with social pressure, with desire for novelty and newness and fun and excitement, and the reward.
[00:15:13] Sensitivity is really high. With a brain that also is not yet equipped for consistent, calm, rational decision making. The novelty, seeking the autonomy is off the charts. The risk assessment consideration is not delayed, but it's still in development, right? So when we punish our kids, when we're like, you better not do this again.
[00:15:43] Or you know, I'm gonna take your phone for longer, or whatever. Right? We're essentially asking a brain that's wired for big feelings to respond to more big feelings, which is our anger, our disappointment, our control, and to suddenly become logical. And that's just not how it works. Plus, when you know in the moment of risk taking or poor decision making, when our kids are inside the situation.
[00:16:14] The idea that they're gonna be like, oh, I better not do this. 'cause last time I got in a lot of trouble that that's where they're gonna head. It's problematic because actually, I mean there are kids that are, that, you know, temperamentally might be swayed by that, but most of our kids are like, probably not gonna get caught.
[00:16:36] This is probably gonna work out fine. Right. I gotta get better at sneaking out. Punishment often does not produce the results we actually intended. Oftentimes, punishment, you know what it does produce is resentment, rebellion. There's four Rs, resentment, rebellion, retreat, and what's the other one? I can't think of it right now, but there's a fourth one.
[00:17:01] You know, what we want them to do is learn. What we want them to do is grow and what they often learn instead is. Don't get caught. Hide it better. Don't tell mom and dad screw you. Look what I can do. You can't control me. Right. And that's not the takeaway we're going for. I know that. I know. That's not what you're hoping they take away from your really thoughtful punishment.
[00:17:26] And then if we're not gonna punish, well, okay, well Casey, you might be saying we don't use punishment, but Absolutely we use consequences. And I will say, I will say right now, consequences are often. Punishment and fancy clothes. Consequences are often, you know, reworded punishments, and I'm gonna say this a couple times.
[00:17:49] Consequences are not always solutions to problems looking for solutions. Wait, how does that go? Look at me, I, what am I talking about right now? Consequences are not always solutions, but solutions are always consequences. So we're not gonna punish. There have to be consequences, right? Again, I hear this all the time.
[00:18:13] I wanna honor it because it comes from a real place. It comes from this understanding that actions have effects and our kids need to know that. Absolutely. That is true. Cause and effect matters for sure. Here's what I want you to sit with again. I'm gonna say this again. Consequences are often poorly disguised punishments, and if that's true.
[00:18:34] Then consequences also can result in resentment, retreat, rebellion, and that fourth R that I can't think of right now. And that's how they feel to our kids. So we're gonna slow down. Consequences in their purest forms are neutral. They're happening all the time. You do your laundry, the consequences. You have clean clothes, you don't do your laundry, the consequences, you don't have clean clothes, no drama, no lecture, just life.
[00:19:01] And there's different kinds of consequences. What I think a lot of parents lean towards or work towards are logical consequences when we're being intentional about them. Logical consequences are related to the challenge, respectful, reasonable, and revealed in advance. I would also add you want to make sure that a logical consequence gives our kids the opportunity to practice or learn new skills for navigating.
[00:19:33] The challenges that they're facing. So again, it's not just go to the corner. I know we don't send our teenagers to the corner, but basically it's like, go sit in the corner, do your time, and then we can try again. We'll see if you make a better choice, right? Why? Why would they make a better choice? What are the skills that they learn in the corner?
[00:19:55] Here's the honest truth. If you have to think too hard about what a logical consequence should be for a particular behavior, there might not be a logical consequence, and that's okay. Logical consequences should not be the most used tool in the toolbox. It's a tool that should sit at the bottom. There's so many other things that we can do that we can respond with that are more supportive.
[00:20:24] To our kids growing and learning. I want you to really lean into this. The goal is to be clear that our kids are having a problem, not being a problem first. You try that on. Our teenagers are having problems. They're not being problems, even though it can feel like they are being a problem for you because you're all wrapped up in what's going on with them.
[00:20:51] So, yeah, it becomes a problem for you. What happens if you remember a mantra that I love? Remember to be fiercely committed. You love your teens. I know you do. Even if you don't like them right now, even if they're really hard to be around, I know that you love your teens. You are fiercely committed, or you wouldn't be listening to this podcast.
[00:21:15] How about you also try on. Lovingly detached. We are so tangled up in our kids' performance and how they're showing up in the world and who they seem to be presenting as right now, we get all worked up and we start taking responsibility for them. And guess what? If we're taking responsibility, they don't have to, and it's messy and it's enmeshed and it's not useful.
[00:21:46] Ugh. I'm totally having one of those moments where I'm like, yeah, Casey, listen to yourself. Our people are having a problem. They're not being a problem. And when we approach what's going on with our teenagers this way, our curiosity shifts. We get curious about the problems they're having, not the problems they're causing.
[00:22:09] Do you hear that distinction? It really changes a lot. Now there's also. Natural consequences. Natural consequences are an underrated teacher, right? These are my favorites. They are the best because these are the consequences that happen when we stay out of the way. We don't develop or create natural consequences.
[00:22:33] They exist. Your teen speeds and gets a speeding ticket. They have to deal with that. They have to follow through with that. They have to figure out how to pay it. You get to say, oof, that sucks. How did that feel? I always feel really nervous when I get pulled over. I hate that experience. Like, you know, like what was that like for you?
[00:22:50] What did you notice? What felt tricky about it? You know, be curious. Your teen doesn't study for a test and doesn't get the grade that they thought that they should get or wanted. They get to deal with that. You get to bring curiosity, but really neutral curiosity. These are their grades, not yours. This is their school experience, not yours.
[00:23:12] These are their skills to develop. Your skills to develop are things like patience, nonjudgment, acceptance, faith. That's what you're being called into. Your teen is hurtful to a friend and it creates drama in their friend group. Be a listener, be curious, but let them deal with it. Believe in them. And here's what's beautiful about natural consequences from a brain development perspective, experience is the primary architect of the adolescent brain.
[00:23:47] I'm gonna say that again. Experience is the primary architect of the adolescent brain. Every time your teen faces a real world outcome and has to sit. With discomfort. The problem solving when they have to feel the feelings and figure out what to do next, that's when they are building new neuropathways.
[00:24:07] Not when they're sitting in the energetic corner, not when they're listening to your lectures. It's when they're in the experience. They're strengthening the connections between their emotional brain and their thinking brain. Again, you can't lecture this into existence. They have to live it. Our job in those moments is to be a witness, be curious, validate that what they're moving through is hard honor, that their emotions are real and valid, and here's the discipline part.
[00:24:37] Stay out of their way so that they are experiencing the natural consequences. Of their own choices and decisions. And I know it's hard and it takes so much trust and that's the work that we're doing here.
[00:24:58] So I'm gonna give you a little bit more brain science, 'cause I think it really drives home why solutions and focusing on solutions matter more than punishment. So during adolescence, the brain is going through this massive remodeling process. There's a wave. Of something called synaptic pruning. The brain is literally cutting away connections that aren't being used and strengthens the ones that are so that use it or lose it.
[00:25:24] Dan Siegel talks a lot about this. Use it or lose it is real in the teenage brain. The experience your teen has, the skills they practice, the conversations they're a part of, those are shaping the architecture of their adult brain. And at the same time, there's this thing called myelination, which is the process of insulating neuropathways so that signals travel faster and more efficiently.
[00:25:51] It's happening from the back to the front. So again, that last area that becomes fully myelinated is the prefrontal cortex, that planning, decision making, impulse control, considering consequences before acting like they, that is in development. So think about what this means when your teen does something impulsive, which they do.
[00:26:12] Something that makes you think, what were you thinking? What the fuck? Right? The honest answer might be they weren't, and not because they don't care, not because they're defiant, but because that part of the brain, the part of the brain that would help them to pause and think things through is literally still being built.
[00:26:33] But here's the empowering piece. Every time we engage with our teens in reflective conversation. Every time we help them think through what happened, consider the impact, brainstorm what they could do differently, stay neutral so that they're not reactive to us. We are actively helping them wire the prefrontal cortex.
[00:26:55] We are being the external frontal lobe that they don't fully have yet. This is powerful and meaningful and super important. Punishment doesn't do that. Punishment activates a stress hormone. It floods the brain with cortisol. And when the brain is flooded with stress, the thinking brain goes offline.
[00:27:17] Learning shuts down, self-reflection shuts down, and what is left is self-protection. Fight flight, freeze, fawn. That's why kids who are punished a lot often look really defiant or shut down. They're not being disrespectful, they're in survival mode. So the real work is fighting solutions, right? Here's the good stuff.
[00:27:41] All solutions are consequences. Not all consequences are solutions. So really sit with that. Consequences and punishment don't always solve problems, and that's ultimately what we want our work with our teens to be, right? We wanna help them. Solve the problems that we're having, that they're having solve what's happening under the surface.
[00:28:03] When we frame our teens as just being defiant or being a problem, we've made them the thing to fix, and that is disrespectful, that's shortsighted, and it's not useful. So what is useful? Getting curious about what the actual problem is. What does it look like for them in their friend group? How skilled are they at self-advocacy and saving phase?
[00:28:27] How comfortable are they with the discomfort of not going along with the group? How trained up are they with taking care of their responsibilities or have we been the default doing these things for them? We think about solutions. Solutions are related to the problem, respectful to all involved, reasonable and helpful.
[00:28:50] Helpful means that solutions give our kids the opportunity to make repair, to make things right, to practice New skills. Solution focuses on solving the actual problems that we discover are getting in the way for our kiddos. And this is the shift that really changes everything and where I wanna bring it all home.
[00:29:15] So the idea that a teenager is going to make different choices in the heat of the moment because they don't wanna get in trouble. Not useful or really as reasonable as we'd like it, like to believe, but a teenager who has the opportunity with a safe, healthy adult to think things through, to consider long-term effects, to develop some back pocket tools and responses that feel authentic and meaningful to them.
[00:29:43] For in the moment, that teen, that's the one who's gonna navigate challenges differently, not perfectly. But with more growing awareness, with more growing skill, and with more capacity to be willing to try something different. So again, remember what we know about their brain. It is primed for this work.
[00:30:08] The adolescent brain is more plastic, more adaptable, more ready to learn from experience. Than almost any other time in life, right? The question is, what are the experiences that we're giving them? Are we giving them the experience of being controlled and shamed and judged, or are we giving them the experience of being seen, supported, and coached through hard things?
[00:30:33] What we want most is to help our kiddos nurture and grow their critical thinking. Can we all just agree to that? And the way we do that is by helping them to be reflective, helping them be considerate, helping them look at their choices and decisions free from feeling our disappointment, anger, discouragement, and judgment.
[00:30:57] Right. Because if that's what they're feeling, that's what they're gonna focus on, right? And that gets in the way, it dilutes the opportunity for them to really lean in and practice critical thinking. 'cause they're too busy thinking about how annoying we are or how out of touch we are or what, you know, whatever else, kinds of stories and beliefs they're developing in reaction to us versus.
[00:31:21] In response to looking at their choices and behaviors. So if you're listening to this. And thinking, okay, Casey, but this is really hard. I hear you. It is. It's hard. It's hard to override the instinct that comes down for us, right? I gotta nip this in the butt. I gotta put my foot down. There has to be a consequence.
[00:31:46] It's hard to slow down when your body is telling you to react. It's hard to trust the process when you can't see the results yet. But here's what I want you to hold onto. You are doing really important work every time you choose curiosity over control. Every time you pause, before you punish, every time you sit with your teen in the mess, instead of swooping into fix it or lock it down, you are building something.
[00:32:12] You're building a relationship that your teen will want to lean into, not away from. You're building the neuro, you're helping them to build the neuro pathways that will serve them for the rest of their life. And you're building your own new neuro pathways about being in response rather than reaction.
[00:32:31] You're building trust theirs in you, yours in them. Yours and yours, right? And that. That's joyful. Courage in Action, my friends. That is joyful. Courage in Action.
[00:32:48] I believe in you. I believe you can do all of this. If this episode resonates with you, I'd love for you to share it with a friend who you know needs it. And if you are like, I love this and I need some more support, come to me and check out the 15 minute Explore call option that I have on my website. Be s spreadable.com/explore.
[00:33:13] Book a call, let's talk about it and see if maybe the membership or some one-on-one work is what you need. Is what would be helpful. I'm here for you. Check out the show notes for links and more information about things like sponsors and all that good stuff. But yeah, I will see you next week. I'm so glad that you hung out here with me today.
[00:33:36] I'm really looking forward to hearing what you thought of this content. Other than that, have a beautiful week. I'll talk to you soon. Okay. Bye.
[00:33:50] Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to my Sprout partners, Julietta and Alana. Thank you, Danielle, for supporting with the show notes as well as. Chris Mann and the team at Pod Shaper for all the support with getting the show out there and making it sound good. As I mentioned, sharing is caring. If you're willing to pass on this episode to others or take a few minutes to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, it helps other parents find this useful content.
[00:34:18] Be sure to check out what we have going on for parents. Of kids of all ages and sign up for our newsletter to stay [email protected]. I see you doing all the things. I believe in you. See you next time.
[00:34:35] I.